In this article, we report on the implementation of using the game Werewolf as a student-centered applied-learning activity to teach symbolic interaction theory and concepts. Engaging with symbolic interaction theory can be a powerful experience for students due to its potential to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions and analyze students'…

Role-playing activities, as a form of active learning, enable instructors to teach difficult concepts in ways that better facilitate student learning. This note tests the effectiveness of a role-playing activity that simulates the job market: Most students play job seekers seeking employment, and a few play the employers who make employment…

Few evaluated classroom exercises to date have addressed one of the most cited and compelling explanations of gender formation over the life course: interactionist gender theory. This theory posits that people actively "do" or "perform" their gender in every interaction, and as such, they often subconsciously reshape their…

This article explores the use of a social science-fictional play to teach macro-structural concepts related to global capitalism and surplus labor in a small and large Introduction to Sociology course. Relying on a cross-disciplinary and critical pedagogical approach that combines theory and practice to empower students to develop a critical…

This paper reports on a teaching and learning technique that uses the power of everyday body language and proxemics to illustrate forms of social inequality. More significantly, the active learning exercises assist students to feel the fact that the making and maintaining of power relations is an intimate and visceral matter. In keeping with…

Teachers have incorporated active-learning techniques into the sociology classroom for many years, but the types of applications and evaluations are quite varied. In this paper, the authors quantitatively test a particular form of active learning that they call "living-data exercises," which instructors can use to introduce sociological research…

Theory is a vitally important component of every undergraduate sociology program. Social theory classes are the heart of the undergraduate major in sociology: in these courses, students take on the professional and disciplinary roles of sociologists. This paper reports on two strategies that enlivened their social theory class, generating both…